1. Field of the Invention
The present invention relates to a technique of combining a plurality of images.
2. Description of the Related Art
Recently, various techniques associated with security have been proposed. Japanese Patent Laid-Open No. 2001-324898 discloses a security technique of composing a copy-forgery-inhibited pattern image with an original image. Japanese Patent Laid-Open No. 11-179982 discloses a security technique of composing a digital watermark image with an original image. Japanese Patent Laid-Open No. 2005-151030 discloses a security technique of encrypting an original image.
Even if a user wants to combine a plurality of images to which a plurality of different security processes are to be respectively applied, it cannot help but combine the respective images upon application of different security processes to them. For this reason, the combined image obtained after combining these images becomes an image with nonuniform security levels, e.g., an image having some parts with a high security level and other parts with a low security level. For example, when a copy-forgery-inhibited pattern image is composed with a first image, and a digital watermark image in which tracking information is embedded is composed with a second image, combining these images results in a combined image with different pages having different security levels. In addition, this combined image differs from an image requested by the user even from an aesthetic point of view. Assume that a copy-forgery-inhibited pattern image is composed with a first image, and nothing is composed with a second image. In this case, combining these images into one file only results in obtaining a combined image with different pages having different security levels. Furthermore, this combined image is not an image requested by the user even from an aesthetic point of view.
The present invention has been made in consideration of the above problem, and has as its object to provide an image processing apparatus which can combine a plurality of images, to which a plurality of different types of processes are to be applied, in the manner desired by a user.